I am a machine learning engineer and my boss expects me to train an AI model that surpasses the best models out there (without training data of course) because the client wanted ‘a fully automated AI solution’.

He wants magic.

1. "he solution is so powerful it requires access to cloud resources to power it. Which means there will be a monthly fee. And they'll have yo retain me as an engineer."

2. Stay home

3. Hire a guy remotely to pretend to be AI.

4. ???

5. Profit.

Well, that looks like a research project. Might be pretty expensive. But it definitely can be done. there is still steady advancement in the fields. So obviously it is possible to create a better model than previously existed.

It is just highly unlikely, that your boss has the budget required to pull it off - if you aren't working for one of the megacorps.

That's nothing dude. I was told to build a grammar and spell check module (along with a Google Chrome extension) that can compete with Grammarly. Here's the twist.

I am the only dev.

I was given only 3 months to complete it.

I got asked to quote for the build of an online educational system. The clients had provided a flow chart with over 200 boxes, one of which read 'create an online course'. Sole dev in a company of six people.

Do an analysis of the size of the teams and infrastructure that built the models you're supposed to surpass and hand in an excel sheet summarizing a lower bound on how much it cost. Include the cost of obtaining a dataset. That argument should work much better, it's something they'll understand.

Given it's my current line of work, I relate so fucking much to this.

At least my boss knows AI is not some automagical panacea, and actually has people hired just to label datasets...

One trump card you can play that is not even lying, "I can't label everything by myself, that'd be introducing bias".

@Oktokolo yeah of course, it would be possible by longterm research but that is not exactly the job of a sole dev at a small company with the client asking if it can be done in 2-3 months.

@kaki just a regular dev at a small company. However, my boss understands AI well ask me for a feasibility report so I usually explain the technical challenges. Every other client is like this though

@RememberMe yess, that’s what I usually do in the feasibility report of the project and mostly they understand it.

@Sid2006 omg thissss. This is exactly what I meant in this rant. I am so glad I am not the only one

Some middle east guy offered me 100 dollars for a "small app".

The app should be capable of solve "captchas" for auto posting.

Can you imagine how many noodles I am going to buy with that money? YES!!

Some people are simply nuts. They don't have the resource or money but they want a machine learning model which is better than those developed by Google or Microsoft.